by Larry Baxter
"Hold it! Hold it! Quiet down!" Robert's voice through the speaker caught them off guard and they settled down, guilty, what had they forgotten? It was all right, wasn't it?
"We have a little more work to do before we break out the champagne. We don't have a cure yet, just an improvement in vital signs. But we'll assume it's a complete cure. Another thing, look at the graphs. Even the most dilute dose worked. Contact the Federales and get another medical truck here. Hell, get 'em all here, and give 'em one thousand dilute extract for everybody, the Yucatán only has a few hundred cases. When those drug guys check in give them the antidote. Or, better, have the Federales take it to them with handcuffs."
"But we don't have enough stock even at one part in a thousand for Texas, do we?" asked a technician.
"No, we don't. But maybe we can use a more dilute preparation. Make up more serum in one two-thousandth, one five-thousandth, one ten-thousandth, we'll try it on early cases in the second isolation trailer. Get some more help harvesting the flower."
The next few hours showed that the 1/5000 dilution was more than acceptable, and the hotel turned into a bottling plant. As each bottle could treat a hundred patients, a manageable thousand small bottles were quickly produced and boxed. Robert walked to the parking lot where Colonel Muñoz sat in the Lamborghini, gunning the engine and adjusting his goggles. Phil Schwartz sat in the driver's seat in Penske coveralls and a Bell crash helmet, grinning at them. Robert put the big box in Phil's lap, as the car did not seem to have a back seat, and they screamed out of the parking lot in a searing parabola of acceleration, spraying gravel from the enormous wide tires and startling pelicans into flight with the loud exhaust.
* * *
Robert walked back to the lab and suggested that they start another thousand bottles in case the first shipment met with an accident. Then he hurried back to the trailer without protective equipment to check on Teresa. Her vital signs were improving almost by the minute, and even heavily drugged and in sleep her face was beautiful despite the swollen tongue.
He asked the nurse to make sure that anybody who may have come in contact with the virus got an injection and administered half a cc to himself. Then he dragged the only empty gurney next to Teresa's, lay down in his clothes, reached under the restraining bar to put a hand on hers, and closed his eyes, trying to remember how long it had been since he had slept.
* * *
He awoke, feeling drugged and still dead tired, with the sunrise streaming in the window. Teresa. He looked over at her. One eye opened and looked at him, then the other eye. She closed her mouth on her tongue—now appreciably smaller—and seemed to judge its size. Robert read the details on the bank of monitors. All the vital signs had returned to nearly normal. He said a silent thanks.
"Did it again, hey, ace?" she said in a thick, awkward voice. The effort seemed to tire her, and she lay back with her eyes closed.
"Teresa, we both did it. And the Bolero crew. And all those troops Dr. Teppin airmailed us. How are you feeling?"
"Like reprocessed buffalo dung, but much better than I was, thanks. How's everyone else?"
"It looks like we nailed it. Or the Maya nailed it, and we borrowed it. Anyway, we're twenty for twenty so far. The people we caught early on are already fully recovered."
"What day is it?"
"Thursday. You've been out for about twenty-four hours, we got to you pretty early, you should be up in another day or so."
"Wow, that works fast."
Robert pulled himself out of the gurney, kissed Teresa on her cheek, and checked on Pépé. His vital signs were almost normal, also. Ah, youth. His tongue was still distended and dark, but much smaller than just six hours ago, and he was awake and alert. Robert ruffled his hair. "So, kid, we'll have you back in school tomorrow."
"Thank you, Señor drowned man, I think."
He found Miguel, administered an injection and brought him to his son's bedside.
* * *
The hotel looked like a stock market trading floor. Robert walked through the busy scene, with quantities of bromeliad blossoms arriving by ultralight, helicopter, and automobile. Margo and her crew were working three shifts, cranking out caseloads of the antiviral. He had chatted with Teppin earlier that morning, and the professor confirmed that the success rate was one hundred percent if the treatment began during the prodrome cycle. Teppin also announced that the dilute solutions of the antiviral seemed to work as an inoculation, giving the CDC team a way to check the spread of the disease as well as curing its victims.
Teresa rolled through the big front door on a wheelchair and gave him a big smile. "They sprung me early, Robert Asher, old buddy. I feel relatively great. Thanks again. I can even talk good now, you'll be happy to know, just a little weak in the leg parts. I'll be out of this before dark. Did I say thanks? Thanks. My mouth works great, by the way. Thanks. You can run me down the beach in the chair later if you want your aerobic exercise. You should try the cure yourself. Helluva trip, those guys give great drugs, you know. Have you ever tried morphine? Awesome stuff. Floats you away on a little pink cloud."
Robert whirled and snapped his fingers at a nurse. "Two morphines, please."
"No, no, not yet, you have to tell me what I missed. What did I miss?"
* * *
Robert and Teresa, holding hands, wandered to the terrace after sunset. They sat facing the ocean on a comfortable wooden bench, its orange and black striped cushions still in their original plastic wrapping. The bright moon made patchy shadows of the casuarinas, the big leaves moving and clicking together in the breeze, and the waves added their slow rhythmic sound from the beach a few dozen feet away.
Robert closed his eyes and saw the image of the Maya scientist, Peloc, twelve centuries and a few miles from here, going through the same experience, sharing the same exultation, and he tried to project his thanks back in time. What an amazing man he must have been. Too bad they couldn't work together. But they had, sort of.
"So, Jéfé," Teresa whispered, cuddled up against his left side, her hair bringing the scent of bath soap to his nose, "Now what do you want to do?"
"You mean before or after I sleep for a month?"
"After."
"I think I would like to go back to the beach at Cancún, and stay in the most absurdly expensive hotel we can find. One room, this time, none of that down the hall stuff. We still have that account in Mérida?"
"Right. We're down to a hundred twenty thousand, though."
"Pesos?"
"Dollars."
"That'll do. And then I want to have dinner in the most incredibly luxurious restaurant on the strip. Maybe a three hour job, starting off with a cold martini and a bit of the Beluga caviar, then moving on to the Maryland soft shell crabs. With the crabs, I will order the Chassagne-Montrachet, we will drink half the bottle only and then change to the red, probably the excellent Lafitte-Rothschild '71. We will give the remaining white to the chef to cook with."
"We?"
"Sure, you're coming with me. Then perhaps the pompano en papiotte, if they can do the white wine reduction sauce I've always been partial to, or, failing that, the filet au poivre flambée. It is a French restaurant, right?"
"Feel free."
"OK, French restaurant. Then I will order us the cherries jubilee and ask the maitre d' to turn out the room lights so we can admire the little flickering blue flames. Other diners may complain about the dark, but we will buy them all a liqueur of their choice to shut them up. Or perhaps we will retain Kiraly as our enforcer. After dessert, we will go back to that lounge with the wicker walls and I'll let you sing to me again."
"I like it. Sign me up. After, we can go back to the hotel room, just you and me. And snuggle."
"Sure." He pulled her closer. The little waves struck small rocks together at the surf line, and in the increasing darkness he could see a little explosion of phosphorescence triggered by each tiny collision.
They fell asleep in that position a minute lat
er, awakened after a few hours, and shuffled back to his room where they cuddled in the spoon position and slept another ten hours, barely moving..
The next morning they woke, groggy and still tired, got dressed, and checked the time: half past ten, too late for breakfast. They walked into the big room. It had the look of a New Year's party, the morning after. There were distinct signs of late-night revelry, which Robert and Teresa had been too unconscious to hear. And the breakfast schedule seemed to have been pushed back by popular demand, the buffet was not only still open but they seemed to even be early. They got plates of pancakes and coffee and found a table, although every one in the room seemed to want to shake their hands and grin. It was sort of catching, Robert found himself grinning too.
* * *
Art Baker pulled up a chair. His hair was mussed and he had a lipstick smear on his forehead. He filled them in on progress. "God damn, this is great. You guys did it. It's just going so great. The antiviral got to Texas two hours and thirty minutes after the car left the lot. They had a fleet of helicopters and medics standing by, and the last of the victims were inoculated in the next hour. We got a report this morning; seventeen thousand doses administered so far, nearly ninety-seven percent remission, with the three percent failure rate explained by the fact that those people were just caught too late. Congratulations, sir, ma'am. I can't tell you how proud I am to have been a part of this. I'll leave you to your breakfast now."
* * *
Later in the day as they were packing the equipment and closing the books on the operation, Bolero drifted in and anchored off the reef. The Zodiac bumped through the chop and pulled up on the beach, and the crew stepped out. The medical staff knocked off work to meet them.
Kiraly pulled the rubber inflatable farther up on the beach, reached back and brought up a case of champagne. Gabor and Goldstein and Sarah produced a few dozen thin-stemmed crystal glasses. Bela and Bartok started to work on the corks at five paces, launching them at each other like western gunfighters.
The glasses were filled and passed around. "Moet et Chandon," shouted Gabor. "Best I could do in Mexico. Enjoy."
"Bela, did you get your ultralight back before the birds ate it?" asked Robert.
"Sure, no problemo, one of the choppers let me down on a line, right into the seat, and then hauled us both into the air. I cut loose and did a chopper takeoff, my first."
"Where are you going next?" asked Teresa.
"Costa Rica," yelled Gabor.
"Rio de Janeiro," said Sarah.
"Patagonia," said Bartok.
"Mutiny. Total communications breakdown. Lack of respect. Inattention to duty," screamed Gabor. Sarah chuckled and put an arm around him.
"Goldstein," said Robert, "give me Bolero's e-mail address, if you would. We may need you again, sometime."
An hour later nearly everything was packed, but the videoconference system in the corner was still on line. It lit up with the image of a young man dressed in a pinstripe charcoal suit with a patterned red tie and retro horn-rimmed glasses. "Is this Akumal?" the man asked.
"Who wants to know?" asked Robert, a little loopy from the champagne.
"The President of the United States."
The technicians and Teresa looked over, startled. "OK, then, it's Akumal," said Teresa.
The President appeared in the screen. "Are Robert Asher and Teresa Welles there?"
Robert sobered up. "Yessir, I'm Robert Asher, this is Teresa Welles."
"Dr. Asher, Dr. Welles, the nation is in your debt. Your actions may have saved millions of lives, maybe more. The first lady and I would like to have the great honor of your presence at dinner, at your convenience."
"Of course, sir. Anytime. Teresa?"
She appeared to think for a minute. "Saturday is still free, for me. Anything but enchiladas." She lifted her glass to the screen and took another sip.
"Excellent, my aide will set it up. Meanwhile, is there anything we can do for you?"
"No, sir, thank you," said Robert.
Teresa elbowed him in the side. "One thing, maybe, sir," she said. "We couldn't have done it without Phil Schwartz. And he was involved in some confusion with the IRS, and now he is sort of insecure about returning to the U.S."
The President laughed. "Schwartz!" he gasped out. "Phil goddamn Schwartz!" Finally getting himself under control, he managed to go on, "I like 'confusion with the IRS,' would you be interested in writing speeches for me after this?"
"Do you think you could help?" she went on, unperturbed. "He just wants to be able to come back into the country."
"And I just want a third term. Tell you what, bring him along with a check for a million dollars. He can write that from petty cash. He can sign it over to the U.S. charity of his choice, I'll put in a good word with the IRS. He can join us for dinner if he doesn't drink too much wine."
"Thank you, sir, I'm sure he will be happy to do that."
Epilogue
* * *
A week later
Teppin chuckled, spearing a piece of smoked salmon. "While you folks were vacationing in Mexico, the TV news up here did not cover much else besides the virus, and a lot of it was from your operation. I brought a typical newspaper for your memoirs." He was sitting with Robert and Teresa at a corner table in a Cambridge restaurant at noon.
He pulled a folded front page from his pocket. The Boston Globe headline screamed, in hundred point bold type, "College Profs Stop Virus." The story reported on the Yucatán operation and said that the amazing charge microscope showed Dr. Robert Asher, B.U., and Dr. Teresa Welles, Harvard, where to look for the cure for the Austin virus.
"We're not professors," complained Teresa, "and they missed the Maya connection. To whom do I complain?"
"Nicely phrased," said Teppin. "You will get a chance to tell your side of the story. And you will have to catch up on the details from Texas sometime. Gary Spender became something of a hero, too. He recovered completely from the virus. He contacted me, he wants to buy you dinner sometime."
"I'd like to meet him. He's the catalyst for the whole thing."
"You may have to wait a bit, there is a risk that the virus could be reverse zoonotic, that it could have jumped from a person to a bird or animal before we eradicated it. Spender is now leading a major effort to trap and test. But they have found nothing so far. Robert, did you locate your daughter successfully?"
"Your man got in touch with me, he traced them to Quebec City. They decided that discretion was the better part of valor. I just talked to them last night, they are fine and they will be swinging through Boston to visit. Thanks for your help."
"I get to meet Katie?" said Teresa.
"Tomorrow. You'll love her," said Robert.
Teppin studied their faces. "You two are special friends now?"
Robert smiled, reached out and held Teresa's hand. Teresa kissed him and lowered her eyes demurely, lashes fluttering. "Yes, you are special friends," said Teppin. "How did you like the White House thing yesterday, by the way?"
"Good party," she said. "My first White House dinner. We didn't get to stay the night, though, the Lincoln bedroom was full of Asian lobbyists."
"Yep, it was pretty nice," said Robert. "I thought the President would crack up when Phil told that story about the FBI agent in Mexico."
"I thought the FBI agents at the table would crack up Phil," said Teresa. "Speaking of FBI, what do you hear from the Columbians?"
"I called Muñoz yesterday to see what was happening," said Robert.
"He's not in jail?" asked Teresa.
"Not yet," said Robert. "He says that Ernesto unfortunately died by suffocation before they could get him to the hospital. The others were temporary guests of the Mexican government—something about drug smuggling, assault, and attempted murder. But the Mexican government was a little nervous about security, and is handing them over to the D.E.A."
"Dr. Teppin," said Robert, "The key to this whole thing is the level of Maya science. It was a
huge factor beyond what anybody could have guessed. Teresa and I have been debating the odds—aliens from outer space, or ten or twenty generations of Maya scientists, or one phenomenal superbrain, this Peloc?"
"Civilization's advance has always been lumpy," said Teppin. "Starting maybe 2500 years B.C., there has been a history of dramatic scientific advance which has been subsequently lost, and then rediscovered centuries later. With books, and even more strongly with electronic communication and storage, we are losing the lumps. But back in the ninth century, it is easy to imagine profound advances in a civilization like the Maya. We know they had hot and cold running water, expert mathematicians and astronomers, and an advanced language and calendar. I have no problem with the Maya achieving that level of chemistry and medicine without invoking aliens."
"I can see the knowledge of plant chemistry," said Teresa. "But what about the complete periodic table? Well, complete except for a few rare earth elements. How could they have collected that kind of data? If it's not aliens, is it Peloc or a bunch of people?"
"Both, I would guess," said Teppin, anchoring some capers on his toast points with a little Dijon mustard. "Statistically, you get an IQ of two hundred every billion people. In the last millennium, there have been, what, sixty or seventy billion people? In that big a pile, you'd probably find an IQ of three hundred or more once."
"And for Peloc to have made that kind of discovery, he would need to have started from some baseline of knowledge," said Robert. "He would need to have been born in a civilization which honored scientific knowledge, and which had already created some knowledge base that he could build on."
"Why the underground caves?" asked Teresa. "Do you suppose Peloc believed in the Lords of the Dark?"
Teppin answered. "More likely he used the people's respect for the underworld to protect his laboratory. Or possibly he feared some kind of upheaval and wanted to make sure that his contribution did not get lost."